as sincere, still more to assume that Ireland as a whole would endorse
it, was to weaken, if not to give away, Ulster's best argument, and from
that hour to the end of the war Sir Edward Carson was most loyal to
Ulster's interests.

Further, it is conceivable that by some who cheered it the speech may
have been misunderstood. Yet it is not probable that many who heard
Redmond believed that in order to serve England he was flinging away
Ireland's national claim, to the successful furtherance of which his
whole life had been devoted. The Unionist party as a whole certainly
understood that to accept Redmond's offer in the spirit in which it was
made meant accepting the principle of Home Rule: and on that afternoon
in August they were not unready to accept it. They felt, for the speech
made them feel, that a great thing had happened. Yet they might well be
pardoned for some scepticism as to how the utterance might be taken in
Ireland, and how it would issue in action. A famous Nationalist said
some ten days later: "When I read the speech in the paper, I was filled
with dismay. Now I recognize that it was a great stroke of statesmanship
which I should never have had the courage to advise."

Redmond's instinct had been right. He trusted in the appeal to national
pride and to the sense of national unity. Ireland was perfectly willing,
and he knew it, to give loyal friendship to England on the basis of
freedom. But the test of freedom had now come to be the right to bear
arms, and this was a proposal that Ireland should undertake her own
defence. Ireland was sick of the talk of civil war, and this was a
proposal that Ulstermen and the rest should make common cause. It was an
appeal addressed by an instinct, which was no less subtle than it was
noble, to what was most responsive in the best qualities of Irishmen.
None the less it was a statesman's utterance addressed to a people